putting a bow on it

So we've come to the end of my run of example posts. I'll still post things every so often (let's not lose any sleep over it), but for the most part, I'll be looking to hand over posting duties to other authors. The purpose of the past four posts has been to provide workable examples for future contributions.

This fifth post in the series should be one that reflects on everything that was done for a particular section, and an evaluation of what was learned. I don't necessarily feel like I should evaluate my own work (because it's a bit self-serving), but let me try, at least, to give a basic framework for what other posts might look like when they're written by someone other than me.

Over the past week, we covered the topic of letters of inquiry or direct request letters. Hopefully, we learned a little bit about the format, and a little about the reasons why we send these types of letters. We practiced writing them once or twice before sending real requests out to actual companies. If, for example, you learned something that you didn't know about before, then this would be a good place to mention that. If there are things that you still have questions about, this would also be a good place to elaborate a little bit on that. What did you like or dislike about the process? What might you change about this section if you had the ability?

In addition to our letters, we also had posts that evaluated a corporate blog, discussed a textbook reading, and posted links that gave us a little more information on our topic at hand. Did you find anything in any of those posts helpful? Did you have trouble finding information to fill up your posts? What advice do you have for the group that will take over after you?

In general, this last post should just be something that reflects on how everything went. It gives you the opportunity to think back and examine the work that you did and what you learned. Consider that, and everything that came before, when writing your own reflection!

Messing with Bloggers

A few years back, I lived near Myrtle Beach and worked at Coastal Carolina University (they've got a good baseball team...if you've heard about the school, it's either because of the baseball team or the parties. Whatever). I taught a few communication classes and talked a little bit about organizational communication in some of them. It one class in particular, we had an assignment where everyone in class had to read and respond to a post on a blog titled "Advanced Organizational Communication".

I did this for a couple reasons. First, and I guess importantly from an educational standpoint, I wanted people in the class to get an idea of what other people - and in this case, students from a different university - were saying about a topic that was hopefully familiar. Second, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, I wanted to prank the administrator and/or authors of the blog in question.

Let me explain. When I first accessed the blog, it had been dormant for a few years. This meant, I assumed, that it had been used in conjunction with a class and as such, it wasn't meant for public consumption, at least in the way we were using it, completely at random and without context. Because of this, each blog post had, roughly, somewhere between zero and one comment attached to it. I thought it'd be funny, in its own way, for these posts to lie dormant for three years, only to be deluged with dozens of comments all in one day. If the author had it set up so that he or she would receive an e-mail after every comment was sent (an option for sites like Blogger), that person would, out of the blue, get e-mails like crazy within a 48-hour span. It's possible that person would think that his or her work was suddenly relevant and gaining widespread attention; perhaps that person would think that fame and recognition was surely to follow.

And then, after a couple days, no comments ever again. What happened? I guess fame is fleeting. This would be funny, I thought, in the sense that we'd be confusing complete strangers for apparently no reason.

I checked back a couple days ago, and apparently the site, which still hasn't been updated since 2006, has disabled the comment function. So I guess all of our mass commenting had some effect after all. The site still does have some interesting things to say about organizational communication, for what it's worth.

It would be pretty funny (at least to me, and that's all I'm really concerned with, honestly) if some random group decided to comment bomb this blog. Let's give it a good head start and have everyone in class (or, heck, all over the world) leave a comment on this post. It will let me know that everyone has at least some idea of how to navigate this site. Give it a try!

Welcome...to the world of tomorrow!

Here's our first class blog post, put in place perhaps because I didn't want the blog to have nothing on it. Would the URL even work at that point? Who can say. But now we never have to risk that terrible future as here we have a wonderful (...) placeholder until the class actually starts and we're able to post somewhat real items, and not just weird pictures such as this:

This is how people in the early 20th century thought phones would look like in their future. And, I guess, they weren't all that wrong, huh? Though Why the lady in the yellow speed suit is talking to a baby is anyone's guess.

Hopefully we'll be able to use this space to practice some of our own writing in a fashion that maybe we're not all jaded by at this point. I'd like to put a special focus on corporate blogs, which is, I think, a fascinating aspect of business writing and something that doesn't get enough focus on the business side of academia.

We'll see how it goes.